Today, Joe asks Jamie why we don't see miracles like we did in the Bible.
Here are the books referenced in today's episode:
https://www.amazon.com/Miracles-Very-Short-Introduction-Introductions/dp/0198747217/
https://www.amazon.com/Miracles-Credibility-New-Testament-Accounts/dp/0801039525/
https://www.amazon.com/Defense-Miracles-Comprehensive-Action-History/dp/0830815287/
https://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Introduction-James-Jr-Dew/dp/0801097991
Jamie Dew: Hey everybody. It's Jamie Dew.
Joe Fontenot: And I'm Joe Fontenot.
Jamie Dew: And welcome back to our podcast Towel and the Basin.
Joe Fontenot: That's right. And so today, Jamie, here's my question. Why do miracles happen? Or why don't I see miracles happening rather? We hear about miracles in the Bible, I don't see miracles. What's up?
Jamie Dew: Yeah. I think that's a fair question. When we read our Bibles, there seemed to be on almost every page it seems like that God is intervening in the world and acting in the world and doing things like that, such that when you read it across the Scriptures, you could get the impression, I think this is a wrong impression, but you could get the impression that such activity is happening all the time every day. As Christians, we are obligated and we do affirm, as do I and any other Christian, that these miracles do in fact happen, but I don't know, so there's lots of issues here. So all that decided to preface where we're going to go with this. I don't know that it's the right impression to have that this is supposed to be happening every day, that this is what we would call normative.
So, because you read that and you might get that impression, and then you look at your life and our life and every single day that we live, it's just rare to see things like this happen. So that disconnect just may cause a number of people to have some trouble or some angst about what's going on in their lives. So we do need to answer the question about why aren't these miracles aren't happening. But before we do that, I think we need to get straight and square on what we mean by miracle in the first place. Is that cool?
Joe Fontenot: Yeah. That makes sense.
Jamie Dew: Yeah. So, I mean, look, we use, I want to urge and caution Christians. So on one hand, I don't want to be the guy here that's going to start correcting everybody when I hear them misuse the term. I don't like being that guy. I don't want to be that guy, but I would want to caution believers on just how haphazardly we throw out that term all the time. Man, it seems as though people talk about it and talk about things that clearly are not miracles, they talk about them in miraculous terms. And that I'll just say upfront, we're not helping our case when we use miracles so haphazardly. If everything is a miracle, then nothing is a miracle. We've just got to be real careful with that. That's one thing I'd want to say.
The other thing I'd want to say, and I am going to define this in just a second, the other thing I'd want to say as we move towards the definition is we need to distinguish between the various ways that God interacts with his world. One of the ways he does that is a miracle. Another way he does that is through just providential acts. He interacts with the world, and I'll define that as well, he interacts with the world on a real brute ontological level by upholding it and keeping it into existence and holding it all together. He interacts with his world spiritually speaking through his Holy Spirit, which leads and guides and convicts. There have been moments in history where he interacted with his world via bodily presence in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. So all of these are ways that God has and does interact with his world. What we're particularly interested in are these miracles. And I want to say, we got to define that in the right way and not confuse that with providential acts.
So let me start with providential acts. Okay. Providential acts of God are, let me be clear, they are acts of God. So whatever praise and honor is due is there, it's due to him. He is doing something through providential acts. When God acts providentially this is the chess player kind of move. It's him interacting with and interweaving his influence through the quote, unquote normal end quote events of the world. So it's the decisions that you and I make. It's the regular flow of stuff that happens in nature and God as being the omniscient, all wise God has a way of guiding those events in our hands and in our lives such that his kingdom will come, his gospel will be preached and his people will be made whole and strong.
So for example, here's a good example of a providential act. When I struggled as a kid to read and as I struggled as a kid to spell and as I, and I still, man, I start every class with a disclaimer, they don't pay me to spell. So when I take the marker for the first time and walk up to the whiteboard before I say a word, before I write a word up there, I just go, look, I can't spell guys and deal with it. And so we move on and we all laugh and we move on and then I never feel bad about it again.
But in that struggle through my life, there was also at the same time, a deep work of God to use that struggle in my life in such a way that it made, it forced me to get very creative in how I articulate things. And as it turns out in the seat that I now sit in, that's a really helpful thing. The various experiences that I had as a pastor, the various experiences I had as an academic, the various experiences I had as an administrator across the span of 20 years, who knew that that whole time would be a perfect preparation for me as I now sit in this seat. These are examples of providence. NOBTS is known as the school of providence and prayer. This is God working through our lives, through the quote unquote normal events, to bring about his purposes. Okay. So that's providence.
I mention this because I think sometimes we call providential acts miracles. Here's an example of that. When I was in college, I didn't have money and I can remember this particular semester, I needed, I was about $350-ish short on what I really needed for the semester to get my stuff paid. Back then $350 sounded like a billion dollars, but now it's $350. And I can remember, nobody knew about this. Nobody knew about this. And I just prayed and I didn't know what to do because I couldn't work any more hours with the load I had and all these things, all these variables, why I couldn't do anything else. And I didn't know what else to do other than pray. Man, within a week, I go to my mailbox and in my mailbox, there's an envelope with $350 in there. And it's unsigned, I don't know who did it. I still to this day, don't know who did it, but I tend to think that what happened there was that God also moved in the heart of a person and guided them to give me a gift. And maybe not even knowing why and God provided for me that way. I think that's God moving providentially here in these moments. I wouldn't put that in the category of miracle.
Now, disclaimer, lot of my students, the moment I give a story like that, they don't have a problem with me describing my teaching experience, my career experience and my struggles as a kid, they don't have problem with me saying that's providence. They have a problem with me saying the event I just described about the money is an act of providence, not a miracle, because they want to chalk it up to a miracle. But I say to them, look, I don't think that God suspended the flow of nature there. God simply moved in the heart of his people and acted on my behalf and so I'd put that in the category of providence.
Now this brings us to miracle. So then what is a miracle? Traditionally philosophers, Christian theologians and philosophers have wanted to say something like, we'll all nuance it differently when we write our definitions in the books we write and such, but essentially what we all would want to say is something like this, we would say that a miracle is a God caused event. Let's get real clear about that. He's the one who did it. A God caused event that suspends the flow of nature to bring about one of God's purposes.
Okay. That's three parts. God did it. How did he do it? Suspension of the laws of nature and I need to come back in and underscore why that's important to say it that way. And then thirdly, I'll unpack this now, to accomplish one of God's purposes. Now what could those purposes be? And this would actually, perhaps we do a follow-up podcast to this to talk about some things like hiddenness and such, is that essentially God's purposes throughout the Scripture are things like this, confirming a person, a message or an office.
So for example, a person, the Messiah himself, how did we get confirmation that Jesus really was who he said he was? Well part of the answer to that question is the miracles that God did. He suspended the laws of nature themselves. Jesus walked on water, he healed the sick and the blind, he raised the dead, stuff that in nature is not supposed to happen happened, right? And that's part of what made people look at him differently and say, ooh. They were inclined to believe that he in fact is who he says he was because of what we saw happen there in those events. So the miracle, the suspension of the flow of nature confirmed that Jesus was who he was.
It could be the confirmation of a message. Remember that Jesus sent out the disciples to preach the message of the gospel and he gave them the power to do all those other things too. Why? As a confirmation, not of those people per se, but the message they were preaching was confirmed that way. And then sometimes confirmation of an office, like a prophet or an apostle or something like that. So I think this is why you see in after Jesus ascends back up into heaven, this is why you see for that next generation of disciples and apostles, the ability to do supernatural things. Why? Because there's a confirmation of the message of the gospel, a confirmation of the Scripture, as a confirmation of all those things. So those are some of God's purposes that God would do a miracle for.
Another thing, another example of this, think about Old Testament though. You've got Moses and the children of Israel and you've got the 10 plagues, all of those are miracles. You've got the parting of the Red Sea. Now why did God do that miracle there? That doesn't seem to be confirming Jesus as the Messiah per se or any particular message other than Pharaoh, you're supposed to let the people go. And it's not even like the confirmation of an apostle or something like that. So what was God doing there? Why did God do that miracle? Well, again, he did a miracle there in that case to make sure that the flow of history is maintained in such a way that the Messiah could still come.
So imagine this, imagine that the Red Sea, God doesn't intervene and there's no pillar of fire. There's no dividing of the Red Sea that keeps Pharaoh's armies from coming and killing all the Israelites. Imagine that God had not intervened and the Israelites had been snuffed out right there. Okay. What would happen throughout the rest of the flow of history there? Well, if Israel gets snuffed out right there, remember the messianic prophecy to Abraham in chapter 12 of Genesis, that through this bloodline, the bloodline of this people, the Messiah was going to come. If Israel gets snuffed out there, then the bloodline of Jesus has cut off and there is no Messiah that's going to come.
So this is one of those moments in history where if God really does want the Messiah to come and he does, if he does not intervene in that moment, then ultimately his kingdom will not come. So what would God's purpose be in that case? To preserve the lineage and the history that is to unfold culminating in the coming of the Messiah, culminating again, in that Messiah is sitting on a throne over nations, over the universe forever and ever and ever and ever and ever.
All that to say miracle, what is it? It's a God caused event where God suspends the laws of nature and he does it to accomplish one of his purposes. Now, just real quick, I'd say this, I think you have to use the language of suspend the laws of nature, as opposed to violating the laws of nature, because that's what the skeptic and that's what the atheist wants you to define it with. And they'll say things like this, I'm not particularly persuaded by this, but at the same time, I'll just, I think, okay, I'll use the language properly here because I don't want to deal with the headache. If you say violate the laws of nature, then that sort of insinuates, or breaks the laws of nature, that insinuates something very negative that God's doing. Like if he's breaking the laws, then the next time he wants the laws of nature to work like when you get in your car and drive down the road, you want gravity to hold your car in the road, right?
Joe Fontenot: Sure.
Jamie Dew: If he broke the laws, then the next time he wants those laws to work, he's got to rebuild them and that's silly. Okay if he violates them, then that suggests something moral that, ooh, God intended these laws to be in place and now he unintends them and so now you've got this bipolar God up there that can't make up his mind on which way it's supposed to be. Okay. This is the suspension of the laws of nature and an old friend of mine, Win Corduan put an illustration in his book called No Doubt About It years ago, this is decades old book now, but Win's a great guy and this is a great illustration I think. Think of it not as a breaking of the laws of nature, but a suspension of the laws of nature.
In the same way that if you pulled into an intersection where something out of the ordinary's happened, a wreck or something like that, and the traffic lights are still working and saying green, yellow, and red, but there were a police officer standing in the intersection due to the unusual circumstances. What trumps in that moment? Is it the light or the officer? It's the officer. So even though the light may still be operating saying one thing, who do you listen to? You listen to the officer. He has the right and the privilege to redirect the normal flow in that moment, in that place to accomplish what needs to happen. There's no violation here. There's no breaking here. It's simply the suspension of the regular flow of nature. So in miracles, things that don't happen happen because God suspends that regular flow of nature to do what he wants to do. So that ... miracle is.
Joe Fontenot: That makes sense. And that's really helpful framework to differentiate God moving the hearts of people, to God's suspending nature and so forth. Because I think I would probably fall into the category of your students when that $350 showed up, at first blush, I would think sounds like a miracle to me. I mean, I want it to be a miracle.
Jamie Dew: No doubt, but why do you want it to be a miracle? Because you deeply want to believe that God just did something for you. And what I say in response is he did. By saying it's providential is not saying God has not been involved in your life. Saying it's providential does not mean that he is do any less praise and honor and love and affection and devotion and awe. Because if anything, what that means is he heard your prayer and he did, now I will say this, while there was no law of nature per se, that was suspended, what God did do is move in the hearts of other people to direct them to do something for you. How is he worth any less praise in that scenario than an ax head floating or the sea splitting? You know what I mean?
Joe Fontenot: Right. Sure.
Jamie Dew: The miracle side of it is more glamorous. But again, to my earliest point on this, we just use this term recklessly. People watch a child be born, and I mean, here's a good example of this, how many people have we heard say things like this, man, I watched, I didn't believe in God and I watched my wife give birth and the miracle of child. And we want to say that that's a miracle. Look, I hate to say this, but a miracle is actually, I mean, childbirth is one of the most clear examples of what does normally happen in the course of [inaudible 00:16:04], right? So that's not a miracle. That's a natural process that God made. It's a natural process that he's using there in that moment. And so I just don't think that helps us to say that kind of stuff.
Joe Fontenot: It's almost like sometimes we use the word miracle on a value scale. Like something that's really valuable from God is called a miracle.
Jamie Dew: That's right. That's right. That's a very good observation. And what I'd say is look, everything that God does in our life is valuable. When he works in my heart and your heart to turn this heart of stone into a heart of flesh, that is in my, well, maybe not a miracle because there was no law of nature per se, that he suspended in that moment, it is still something that only God can do. And therefore I am grateful and therefore I am awed and therefore I love him. And I think we just got to think about those things that way. So all that to say, these are not normal events.
And then now if I could push back on a couple things, so here's a couple objections. One objection is well yeah, and we started here, in the Bible they seem to happen every day, all the time and in our lives they don't. So the disconnect objection. The disconnect objection, I think a lot of people feel that and are very persuaded by it. And so this is where we might want to do a follow-up because while a lot of philosophers of religion will talk about the hiddenness of God in relation to the problem of evil, I think you could, and it fits there. But in my mind, the way I think about miracles informs how I would answer some of those questions and almost necessarily takes me in that direction.
I do think that, yeah, when you read the Bible, it looks like this stuff happens every single day and then in our life, it just doesn't happen every day. So that disconnect looks like a problem. Well, I pushed back on a number of ways. Number one, I'd say no, read more carefully. When the biblical authors record these events, it seems pretty clear that there's in many cases, large gaps in terms of time between when this one happened and that one happened. So while it may be recorded, several miracles may be recorded across the span of a couple pages, actually, there may have been huge amounts of time in the middles, which means it wasn't happening every single day. Right?
I mean, so that Isaiah would say things like in the year that King Uziah died, I saw the Lord high and lifted up. And in other words, what he wants you to understand is I remember it was one of those moments, like where were you in John F. Kennedy was shot? Where were you when 9/11 happened? Where were you when the capital was breached? Maybe you heard about that. Stuff like that. These rare moments in history that something like that happened. So I think that that's probably a misunderstanding of what's happening in the text, the frequency. It is a rare event, even in the Bible. Now it's just the Bible covers such a large period of time that we get a catalog of all the ones that happened.
Some people have said, well, miracles can't happen because the universe is closed. What they mean by that is that the universe is physical and the universe has a set of laws. The laws of nature are absolute in the system and nothing can interact from the outside. And their argument for that comes from the uniformity of nature. And here's what we mean by that, if I dropped a rock a thousand times that rock would fall. If I did a million times, it would fall. If I did it a billion times, it would fall. If someone, a thousand years ago dropped a rock a thousand times, it would fall. A billion times it would fall. A billion times it would fall. If someone, a hundred years from now dropped a rock a thousand times, it would fall. A million times it would fall. You get the point. Across time, these laws do the exact same thing again and again and again. And so some atheists would infer from that. See, it's closed from the uniformity of nature.
Well, I don't reject the fact that the rock is going to keep falling again and again and again. And I don't reject the fact that it's falling because of the laws of nature, but that is a really bad argument, intellectually speaking, because all the uniformity of nature tells us is what will happen in nature if nature is left to itself to act. That's all it tells you. The uniformity of nature and the laws of nature tell you nothing whatsoever. It's completely agnostic about whether or not something could act from the outside. So all that to say, arguments of that nature are just really bad arguments. If we have reason to think that something did in fact happen, then we have reason to think that something did in fact happen. And according to the Christian tradition, that's exactly what we say. We think that a lot, not just the Bible records all these things, but we think that there's a lot of the things that the Bible talks about, that we could even get extra biblical confirmation for. So we're inclined to think that it happens.
So there are other kinds of objections to miracles, but these are some of the big ones that I'm just kind of pushed back on. Another big objection from David Hume, which by the way, if you're interested in these things, David Hume is the guy, he's the atheist that really set these arguments up and most atheists today are simply rehashing the Humean type of arguments. One major argument he had against miracles was the ignorance and the poor education of those who report them. So in other words, he says, isn't it interesting, that the people who claim to have experienced all these miracles are simply ignorant people and poorly educated people.
Well, I would push back on that a number of ways. I would simply say, first of all, no, that's not necessarily true. I mean, the apostle Paul was anything other than ignorant and poorly educated. There are several people through along the story, it's not true that the only people that report these things are poorly educated people.
Second of all, just because someone may not have an education or just because someone may not have a degree does not mean that that person is ignorant or a fool or irrational. In fact, I must insist, look I come from a tribe of people that don't have the luxury of my education, and yet they are some of the most intelligent people that I know. The fact that someone does not have a degree of some kind does not mean, how profoundly arrogant to think that the fact that someone does not have a degree does not mean that they're not intelligent, does not mean that they're irrational. So I think that this is just a matter of being rude and ignorant yourself if you make arguments as that.
So anyway, there's other kinds of criticisms of miracles, but I'm not particularly persuaded by them. At the same time, I want to caution believers, hey, let's use that term real carefully. Let's reserve it for the times and places where God's suspends the flow of nature to bring about his purposes.
Joe Fontenot: And I think the way you described that was helpful because while I have used the word providence and God's providence many times, I did not realize that I was often attributing miracles to providence. I was miscategorizing two things that God did. And I really think for me at least, it's helpful to have those, both those categories clear, to not make that mistake.
Jamie Dew: No doubt. And there's other ways. When people will talk about divine interaction all of these things are under the category of divine interaction, God interacting with his world. The two modes that God interacts with that get the most attention and most press are going to be miracles and providence. And in providence you got is God determining, has he given us free will, you've got all those questions are wrapped up into that. So these two big categories get all the attention and press, but you all, there's this whole other set of ways that God does interact with his world that I think are highly important for us. I mentioned a couple.
Ontological and I know that sounds like I'm just trying to be a philosopher and use big words. Ontology is the study of being. It's the study of reality itself. so what I mean by an ontological kind of interaction, what I'm saying is, is that here's what the Scripture says, "In him we live and we move and we have our being." So what does that mean? It means you can't live without him. You can't exist right now, not just for your initial existence, but for your continued existence. You and I can't breathe without him now, every atom of this universe requires something keeping it all together, and God is doing that. He is upholding all things by the word of his power. If he were to stop, we'd all cease to be.
And that's an important, so when people cry foul, and again, I'd love to maybe do a follow-up to this, God doesn't interact with us. Where is he? If he's such a big deal, this is the hidden, this argument. If God is the big deal that Christianity says he is, where is he? He doesn't interact with us. He's aloof to us, blah, blah, blah. Okay. What about ontological interaction? He's upholding us now. And if he didn't, then we wouldn't exist. It's like the fish asking where the water is. I mean, I don't see any water. Well, you're in it.
And then you've got spiritual interaction. Look, I know we're doing, I'm an apologist, I'm a philosopher, we've come through several decades now in apologetics of thinking that personal stories and testimony are not of much value to us in our apologetic. I think it's high time we just simply say hogwash. The vast majority of the people that ended up being persuaded towards Christian theism get persuaded because they hear other people's stories. They are persuaded by stories. We are persuaded by this. And I think therefore, Christians just need to stand up with their head high and talk very openly about how the spirit of God is alive in their life. And God convicts us. God breaks our hearts. God turns our hearts of stone in the hearts of flesh. And he transforms us by his spirit and by his word, that's real you all. I don't think you can have a faithful Christianity, unless you're talking about that, unless you're championing that. But in apologetic circles, at least we don't want to do that because it's subjective. I get it. We don't like the subjective in apologetics and in philosophy, but the subjective is most fundamental to everything we experience. I don't know how we get out of it.
So anyway, I think you got all these other things that are really cool to talk about too.
Joe Fontenot: Yeah, I think there is more to talk about on this. Well, I have one last little question and I'm kind of putting you on the spot here, but do you have any books or anything, like if somebody is really just kind of just getting into this or they want to dive into more of these things that you talked about, you've mentioned a few books so far.
Jamie Dew: Yeah. A couple of books I'd point you to, The Introduction to Philosophy that Paul Gould and I wrote with Baker a couple of years ago, it was called Philosophy, A Christian Introduction that it's a book that's broad, it covers a wide variety of topics within philosophy, but the miracles chapter, I wrote that chapter. He wrote the chapter on hiddenness. I wrote the chapter on miracles. And so I unpack a lot of the kinds of things I've said in this podcast in that chapter, if you want something to really kind of goes along with what I've said here.
If you want broader defenses of miracles, I would point you to a book back from, I think it's the late '90s, early 2000s. It's by Doug Givett, G-I-V-E-T-T and Gary Habermas called In Defense of Miracles. I would also point you, if you really want to get into this stuff, the New Testament scholar, Craig Keener has written a two volume set with Baker called Miracles. And it is if you want something highly researched and highly documented, that's just a phenomenal apologetic tool, now, just understand you're jumping into the deep end with this one, and it's a long journey. You're not getting to the end quick. But man, that's fantastic. I can't recommend that one highly enough, Miracles by Craig Keener.
And then the last thing I would point you to, if you want a very short, very concise and a very perspectively broad perspective on this, the guy that I studied with at the University of Birmingham, Yujin Nagasawa, my friend and mentor Yujin Nagasawa wrote a little book with Oxford. It's in that Oxford very short introduction series, so you're talking about a book that's about 80 pages and it's just called Miracles. And Yujin, that book is particularly, might be a good place to start because it will give you not a distinctly Christian view, though I do think he represents our view very well and fairly, it gives you a broader picture that in philosophy and religion, here's how this issue has been thought through by philosophers of all these different perspectives. So that's a good, broad overview of the literature that you can start with.
Joe Fontenot: Okay, cool. Well, I think what we can do is we could just drop those in the comments, so anybody listening in their car or whatever it doesn't crash. So they could just look that up later, I'll do that. And so, well, this has been great. I look forward to talking more about this and diving more into this.
Jamie Dew: Hey man, I enjoyed it as always.
Joe Fontenot: All right. Thanks Jamie.
Jamie Dew: See you man.
Joe Fontenot: Hey everybody. This is Jamie and Joe again, if you liked this podcast, would you leave us a rating and review wherever you listen to podcasts. That helps other people find it.
Jamie Dew: And if you have any questions, we'd love to hear about them. Just go to Jamiedew.com/questions and send them in that way. And we'll take a look at the most frequently asked questions and give them a shot.